This blog came into existence based on a post originally addressed to a fellow younger worker who was clueless about the "beats" of the 1950s and their stepchildren, the "hippies" of the 1960s, two movements that influenced me considerably in those days. Any and all essays, thoughts, or half-thoughts about this period in order to "enlighten" our younger co-workers and to preserve our common cultural history are welcome, very welcome.
Friday, February 2, 2018
Once Again Love Among The Smart Set- Preston Sturgis’ “The Palm Beach Story” (1942)-A Film Review
DVD Review
By Sam Lowell, retired film critic
The Palm Beach Story, starring (double) Joel McCrea, (double) Claudette Colbert, (single) Rudy Vallee, (single) Mary Astor, written and directed by screwball comedy legend Preston Sturgis, 1942
Recently the newly installed administrator, the “boss” in common lingo from time immemorial among us slaves, Greg Green, who has deposed my old friend Allan Jackson with what proved to be my decisive vote of no confidence since I felt he was spinning his wheels in some 1960s nostalgia trip which he couldn’t abandon decided as a “democratic” gesture to get his hands dirty writing a film review something that he had never done despite having been what he called the moderator, again “boss” over at the on-line American Film Gazette website. Sandy Salmon my successor here (and also old friend and colleague from our own Gazette days) assigned him the old black and white classic Oscar-nominated The Libeled Lady with an all-star and bankable cast. Apparently in his youth unlike this writer Greg did not spent minute one while in high school or college watching retrospectives from the halcyon days of the black and white film noir days or the screwball comedy of the 1930s and 1940s. He gave the thing a big pan which is neither here nor there and his prerogative. What irked me no little was that he disparaged his grandparents who during their struggle to keep their heads above water appreciated such films. Even if they concerned the Mayfair swells a term he freely admitted he had never of before he talked to me about his feelings after viewing the film.
Well I have news for Greg I am on the trail of another tale from deep among the Mayfair swells when they head to their winter watering holes to escape the hellish Northern winters none other than legendary screwball comic master Preston Strugis’ The Palm Beach Story. On this one though you have to follow the bouncing ball since Mr. Sturgis is up to his “old now you see it now you don’t” best practice.
For openers we see regular middle class striving Tom, played by durable Joel McCrea a Sturgis favorite and Gerry, played by resilient Claudette Colbert ready to tie the knot, get married and they do. Problem though is they are struggling like crazy to even keep their heads above water in the tough racket architecture design world that is Tom’s chosen profession. Gerry comes up with the bright idea that they should divorce so she can find some rich moneybags looking for an eligible divorcee on the rebound. And she does bagging this oil king played by crooner Rudy Vallee who takes her to his digs in Palm Beach then as now the resort of the very rich no plebeians need apply. (If you don’t believe me read the late Hunter Thompson’s Rolling Stone article on the Pulitzer divorce of the 1980s when the Mayfair swells bared their fangs). Its turns out that the oil king money bags has a promiscuous and flighty sister who at some point in her meanderings grabbed a prince and hence is a princess, played by cagey Mary Astor last seen in this space riding the ride, riding down to the big step off after Sam Spade throws her over to save his own worthless skin when a certain golden egg black bird turned out to be a fake.
While all this is going on Tom, you remember Tom, is lonely for his Gerry and flies down to Palm Beach to find out what is what. What is what turns out to be that old moneybags wants to marry Gerry and this looney sister princess has eyes just then for Tom. The conundrum seems like a dead-end for all parties but that is when you have to do double time with that bouncing ball. Let’s put it this way moneybags and the princess both get married. You have to go back to the beginning of the movie to figure out why all of this is not just a huge case of bigamies of which only lawyers would benefit. I am sure the “boss” would put his thumb down on this one too. What the heck did he do in his young man-hood on those what the hell do to vagrant Saturday afternoons.
A Kinder, Gentler Super-Hero Saga- George Clooney’s “Batman and Robin” (1997)-A Film Review
DVD Review
By Sam Eaton
Batman and Robin, starring George Clooney, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Uma Thurman,
I don’t care if I say it, say it right out loud at the beginning. WTF
I had been given the understanding that after several attempts to draw down this fetish with reviewing comic book characters thrown onto film that we were done with this foolishness. Several writers here have rebelled against the trend, at least in print, have rebelled against the idea that the way to reach a younger audience was to cater to this aspect of the American cultural landscape. Still, and here I will name names, site manager Greg Green, Max Steiner, Lenny Larkin, Jim Morris, Ralph Morse, not one of them under forty, still believe that this is the way to go. Hell, Greg Green refused to let any of the writers review a Batman film starring Chris Bale and the late Heath Leger who played the psychopathic Joker when the violence and inanity of the plotline was so over the top he wrote the scathing review himself. That is when some of us thought, foolishly it turned out, that we had turned a corner, that sanity had come back into vogue here as it had under the un-nameable previous regime when reviewing pop culture kids’ stuff was the exception, the great exception not the rule.
Then Greg Green lowered the boom, lowered it on me in the first instance when he assigned me to do this film, this Batman and Robin which he said he had previewed and while there was the usual amount of mandatory violence the bad guys were at least socially redeemable. Reason, reason for handing me this heap of ashes, this fucking crap if you want to know my real feelings. I had not done a super-hero flick review and it was high time I did so under the old chestnut rubric of “broadening my horizons.” Me, a guy who has reviewed Jean Renoir, Jean Cocteau, Truffaut, all the French New Wave, done a million reviews of film noir which I helped to revive in this country by getting half empty theater houses to put on retrospectives which filled up those empty seats in campus towns and decent-sized cities, done all the screw-ball comedy classics, done reviews of half the Oscar-winners over the past thirty years or so, reviewing comic book characters for what did Sandy Salmon call them, yeah, butter-drenched popcorn and sugar refill soda cup kids too lazy to even read the freaking comic books. I refused. Then Greg pulled the so-called democratic fast one on me. Asked me flat out with no way to avoid the meaning if I wanted to go before the Editorial Board, his handpicked toadies, stooges and hangers-on for a vote of no confidence, a vote to get canned by that rubber-stamp crew. Having just now three very nicely brought up kids to get through college I folded, tucked away my sword.
Here is what you missed if you had avoided that comic book craze when you were a kid and need to get updated on what the kids are watching these days. Always, always, the health and safety of a major American city, Gotham, really New Jack City by the Hudson if you want the real life model is left in the hands of one Batman, wealthy scion Bruce Wayne in civilian life, who has been played by half the rugged Type A males of Hollywoodland, here played by cool and calm and collected George Clooney. In this one he is aided by his neophyte young partner Robin, and later by foxy Batgirl or something like that although I will be politically correct and call her Bat Woman hereafter. You know though this trio is not dealing with real New York City plagued by drugs, poor transportation, expensive housing, inadequate schools and social programs, and racial injustices. Batman, alone or with his newfound company, inevitably has to deal with a single nefarious villain who has the capacity to destroy the whole town without working up a sweat. This time it is a holy goof named Mr. Freeze, played by body-builder, former California Governor and Maria Shriver’s ex-hubby Arnold Schwarzenegger, who after diving in a vat of nasty chemical can only live where the air is, well, chilly. His big problem though is that those chemicals made him a holy goof trying to take down the world into a new Ice Age all because he couldn’t find a cure for his wife’s ailments.
No question the new version of the Iceman Cometh is a dastardly dude who wants to ransack dear sweet Gotham for diamonds that keep his funny bunny suit going and keep him, well, chilly. Batman and maybe Robin a little grab him and put him where he can’t harm a hair of honest citizens’ heads. The trouble with these comic book-derived plots is that there is plenty of room for holy goofs of all sorts. Enter Poison Ivy, an ex-scientist who went over to the wild side after stewing in her own vat of unhealthy chemicals, played by Amazon luscious Uma Thurman whose crusade is to wipe out the human race and let the fauna and flora run the earth on behalf of some old flea-bitten hag named Mother Earth. You would think that two holy goofs working at cross-purposes would not have any reason to become allies but so it came to pass. A regular holy goof united front to bring down sweet Batman and Robin and Bat Women protected Gotham first with deep freeze and then with plants not out of Home and Garden.
Naturally after good old boy Freeze is captured and put away the first step in Ms. Ivy’s playbook is to free her fellow holy goof so he can put the big freeze on Gotham. Meanwhile the divine Ms. Ivy started turning Gotham into the second Garden of Eden. She too gets kicked out of Paradise, pushed east of Eden by none other than Bat Women in her first outing as a high profile crime stopper. Ivy behind bars leaving the Frig to menace the town and he does. Batman and friends make short work of him though since we are in the age of climate change on the hot side not cold side. Case closed.
Well, as Frank Jackman likes to say, not quite. This is where the kinder, gentler villain Greg Green tried to convince me was worth my reviewing this turkey for comes in. Seems Ice Cube was a real scientist before the fall, before he left his Eden. Had worked on a cure for his wife, or tried. Here is where that comes in handy, gets him a reprieve from the big step-off. See longtime Bruce Wayne indentured servant Alfred, an English dude from England is dying of the same kind of affliction that had the Freeze man’s wife in cold storage. Batman plays off of the guy’s human side to give Alfred a little more time on the orb. In exchange the good Doctor gets to work his lab stuff in the nut house they have set up for him. Jesus, I can’t believe that I reviewed this silly excuse for a film. Maybe, just maybe, if he has a lucid moment Greg will blue-pencil this one to death.
The
Hills And Hollas Of Home- In Honor Of The Late Hazel Dickens-The “Queen” Of The
Appalachia Hills And Saturday Night Red Barn Dance
By
Sam Lowell
This is the fourth and
final installment (the first dated January 13, 2018, the second dated January
19, 2018, and the third January 24, 2018) set as an introduction to the history
of the American Left History blog. Initially I believed that
this would be a several part series and now it looks like with this final section
about the massive internal in-fighting and resultant shake-up that brought the
original leader of all of these publications down, brought in a new regime with
my help and whatever direction the new leadership is heading we are finally
done with a task a lot harder than I thought it would be. For a final time as I
have been at pains to mention before this task came to me because I am one of
the few people, more importantly one of the few writers, who has taken part in
almost all of the key junctures in this forty something year history including
the latest flare-up which has brought about a new regime, again partially with
my help, so I am well-placed to tell the tale.
As part of the “truce”
arranged with current site manager Greg Green I will tell the story and will
elicit comments from a couple of other Editorial Board members. The first
installment dealt with the genesis of this blog with hard copy predecessors
going back to the late 1960s when a number of the older writers still standing
came on board, many through long friendships with the previous site manager
going back to high school days, those including myself. The second dealt with
the dog days of the hard copy version of this blog and the greying of its
staff. The third dealt with the transfer to the on-line version and some
preliminary observations about how the just completed internal struggle came to
such a fiery conclusion and explain how I became a member of the opposition.
This final section as I said will deal with the food fight of 2017.
All four parts of the
now completed project will appear as one unit on February 10th.
*********
In a sense this last
section is a bit anti-climactic since I have laid out the history leading up to
the split, my part in it, and the result with the removal of the former site
manager Alan Jackson in what I have described truly as a purge. (Some “fragile”
types on both sides have backed off from that designation saying it is too
rough but Allan knows, just as well as I do both of us veterans of many
old-time political struggles in radical circles, that he had been purged.) That
elevated Greg Green who had originally come over from the American Film Gazette to run the day to day operations to site
manager. As part of the post-Allan regime Greg decided that he would create an
Editorial Board to oversee everything and back up his decisions. For
transparency reasons I should note that I sit on that board. I should also note
that although it has only been in existence the past few months that there has
been gripping about it being a rubber-stamp, a group of Greg toadies, and other
derogatory remarks from young and older writers alike. Greg has also hired a
couple of younger writers, really twenty something out of journalism schools
and English majors. Brought on Josh Breslin’s former companion, Leslie Dumont,
who many years ago worked here as a stringer but getting nowhere with Alan’s
regime left and finally wound up with a big by-line at New York Monthly. Brought on my long-time companion Laura Perkins
who also worked as a stringer and got nowhere with Alan and left for an
academic and high tech career. Still no soap on getting any black writers, or
more generically “writers of color.”
Those are the results
thus far not without controversy and some hard feelings especially by the older
writers who have been stripped of their titles, younger writers too who had
worked for titles. Worse and which almost caused another explosion every writer
now can be assigned any topic on any subject to as Greg says “broaden their
horizons.” But enough of the current doings and back to the spring of 2017 and
the genesis of the in-fighting that has brought these changes.
It almost seems like
some twisted kiss of fate that Alex James, Zack’s oldest brother (who by the
way is about ten years older than Zack showing a good example of the relative
sense of “younger” writers Allan was bringing in. Certainly nobody as young as
twenty something Kenny Jacobs), an old friend of ours from the old neighborhood,
who went on to become a successful lawyer, went on a business trip to San Francisco
last spring (2017). While there out of the blue Alex saw an advertisement on the
side of a bus for something called The
Summer of Love Experience, 1967 at the de Young Museum in famous Golden
Gate Park. Sneaking (according to Alex) out one afternoon he saw the exhibition
and was positively floored by the experience. See, he, we, under the “guidance”
of the late Peter Paul Markin had been in the thick of the “drugs, sex, and
rock and roll” mantra which all of that experience went under. When he got back
to Boston Alex called or e-mailed everybody he knew from back in the days who
was still standing and who had gone out there to see what was happening, to see
as Markin had called it “the world turned upside down.” He gathered a number of
us, including Zack who had gone to journalism school and was a veteran of
various workshop programs, together in order to propose that in honor of our
fallen brother Markin each write our “memoirs” of those times with Zack as
editor and publisher. Those who agreed included old friend Allan Jackson who
had also gone out there with us. The venture was a great success and various
portions were posted last summer on the ALH
blog as well as in booklet form.
That seemingly small
exercise in 1960s nostalgia apparently snapped something in Allan’s head. I
have already mentioned the drift of the blog on the part of the older writers
who were allowed by Allan to pick whatever subject they wanted (with the
left-overs to the younger writers). Last summer right after the memorial
booklet was published and articles posted Allan decided to do a massive blanket
coverage of the 50th anniversary of the Summer of Love by assigning
a million topics related to that time. If you couldn’t link the Summer of Love,
or the 1960s “hippie” experience, into your article he would red-pencil what
you had written. (Allan liked to use a red pencil to “edit” something about his
radical red youth he said when asked why he didn’t use the usual blue pencil.) This
was no joke on Allan’s part. I was doing a little piece on figure skating after
reviewing a Sonja Henny 1930s film. Allan asked me why I didn’t bring up the
ice skating rink at Fillmore and Pacific where “hippies” would go to skate
during 1967 when we were out there. WTF.
All of this came to a
head when young Alden Riley, a new hire for the film department to help Sandy
Salmon out with the increased load of films that were projected by Greg on the
site. He was “assigned” by Allan, over Sandy’s head, to do a review on a
bio/pic about Janis Joplin, a key musical figure in the heady days of the
Monterey Pops Festival. Reason? After Sandy had done a review of D. A
Pennebaker’s documentary about the first Monterey Festival he mentioned Ms.
Joplin’s name and Alan said he did not know who she was. Allan heard about that
blunder and ordered the assignment as “punishment’ is what he told Si Lannon,
another of our old friends. Things only got worse from there as Allan
double-downed on the Summer of Love connection for each article.
I am not quite sure who
called the first meeting of essentially the whole rank of younger writers
(average age somebody figured out about forty-five years old) to see what they
would do about Allan’s manic behavior and their dubious assignments which to a
man they could give f - -k about to quote Zack. Maybe it was Zack since he
Lance Lawrence and Bradley Fox were the three ringleaders of the uprising who
in water cooler legend were dubbed the “Young Turks.” They decided to go to
Allan and put their cards on the table. He rebuffed them out of hand. That is
when I came in, came to one of their meetings being invited by Alden, to see if
I could reason with Allan. I proposed to Allan that we get Greg Green from American Film Gazette to come in to do
the day to day operations leaving Allan time to write some stuff on his own or
think about future assignments. He bought my argument once I explained that we
might lose the whole cohort if things didn’t change. They didn’t as Allan
pressed Greg to hand out these never-ending freaking 1960s world assignments.
To make a long story
short the “Young Turks” (and me) had another meeting, an ultimatum meeting with
me as the emissary to Allan again. The proposal of the group was either Allan
“retire” or they collectively would quit. The decision to be determined by a
majority vote-for or against. For some reason even I don’t understand to this
day Allan agreed. You know the rest including my “traitorous” vote with the
“Young Turks.” My decisive vote since we won by one vote. What you may not know
is that while the split was almost directly along generational lines there were
several abstentions among the older writers from the tallies. Any one of them
casting a vote for Allan would have shifted the totals the other way and I
would have been the one “purged” and working in Kansas someplace. So some of
the older guys had also doubts about the wisdom of going back to the past. Now
that you have the whole story this episode should be at rest. (With the
exception of any articles still in the pipeline before the truce with Greg was
negotiated.)
Kenny Jackman heard the late Hazel
Dickens (d. 2011) for the very first time on her CD album It’s Hard To Tell
The Singer From The Song some years back, maybe 2005, when he was in thrall
to mountain music after being hit hard by Reese Witherspoon’s role as June
Carter in the film Walk The Line. At that time he got into all things
Carter Family unto the nth generation. A friend, a Vermont mountain boy, hipped
him to Hazel during his frenzy and he picked up the CD second-hand in Harvard
Square. (Really at Sandy’s located between Harvard and Central Squares, a folk
institution around town where until recently Sandy had held forth since the
early 1960s folk minute when everybody was desperately looking for roots music
and that was the place to look first. Hazel’s You’ll Get No More Of Me, A
Few Old Memories and the classic Hills of Home knocked him out. The
latter, moreover, seemed kind of familiar and later, a couple of months later,
he finally figured out why. He had really first heard Hazel back in 1970 when
he was down in the those very hills and hollows that are a constant theme in
her work, and that of the mountain mist winds music coming down the crevices.
What was going on though? Was it 2005 when he first heard Hazel or that 1970
time? Let me go back and tell that 1970 story.
Kenny Jackman like many of his
generation of ’68 was feeling foot loose and fancy free, especially after he
had been mercifully declared 4-F by his friendly neighbors at the local draft
board in old hometown North Adamsville (declared 4-F in those high draft days
because he had a seriously abnormal foot problem which precluded walking very
far, a skill that the army likes its soldiers to be able to do). So Kenny,
every now and again, took to the hitchhike road, not like his mad man friend
Peter Paul Markin with some heavy message purpose a la Jack Kerouac and his
beat brothers (and a few sisters) but just to see the country while he, and it,
were still in one piece no pun intended Kenny told me since the country was in
about fifteen pieces then).
On one of these trips he found himself
stranded just outside Norfolk, Virginia at a road-side campsite. Feeling kind
of hungry one afternoon, and tired, tired unto death of camp-side gruel and
stews he stopped at a diner, Billy Bob McGee’s, an old-time truck stop diner a
few hundred yards up the road from his camp for some real food, maybe meatloaf
or some pot roast like grandma used to make or that was how it was advertised.
When he entered the mid-afternoon half-empty diner he sat down at one of the
single stool counter seats that always accompany the vinyl-covered side booths
in such places. But all of this was so much descriptive noise that could
describe a million, maybe more, such eateries. What really caught his attention
though was a waitress serving them “off the arm” that he knew immediately he
had to “hit” on (although that is not the word used in those days but “hit on”
conveys what he was up to in the universal boy meets girl world). As it turned
out she, sweetly named Fiona Fay, and, well let’s just call her fetching, Kenny
weary-eyed fetching, was young, footloose and fancy free herself and had drawn
a bead on him as he entered the place, and, …well this story is about Hazel, so
let us just leave it as one thing led to another and let it go at that.
Well, not quite let’s let it go at that
because when Kenny left Norfolk a few days later one ex-waitress Fiona Fay was
standing by his side on the road south. And the road south was leading nowhere,
nowhere at all except to Podunk, really Prestonsburg, Kentucky, and really,
really a dink town named Pottsville, just down the road from big town
Prestonsburg, down in the hills and hollows of Appalachia, wind-swept green,
green, mountain mist, time forgotten . And the reason two footloose and fancy
free young people were heading to Podunk is that a close cousin of Fiona’s
lived there with her husband and child and wanted Fiona to come visit (visit
“for a spell” is how she put it but I will spare the reader the localisms). So
they were on that hell-bend road but Kenny, Kenny was dreading this trip and
only doing it because, well because Fiona was the kind of young woman,
footloose and fancy free or not, that you followed, at least you followed if
you were Kenny Jackson and hoped things would work out okay.
What Kenny dreaded that day was that he
was afraid to confront his past. And that past just then entailed having to go
to his father’s home territory just up the road in Hazard. See Kenny saw
himself as strictly a Yankee, a hard “we fought to free the slaves and
incidentally save the union” Yankee for one and all to see back in old North
Adamsville. And denied, denied to the high heavens, that he had any connection
with the south, especially the hillbilly south that everybody was making a fuse
about trying to bring into the 20th century around that time. And here he was
with a father with Hazard, Kentucky, the poorest of the poor hillbillies, right
on his birth certificate although Kenny had never been there before. Yeah,
Fiona had better be worth it.
Kenny had to admit, as they picked up
one lonely truck driver ride after another (it did not hurt in those days to
have a comely lass standing on the road with you in the back road South, or
anywhere else, especially if you had longish hair and a wisp of a beard), that
the country was beautiful. As they entered coal country though and the shacks
got crummier and crummier he got caught up in that 1960s Michael Harrington Other
America no running water, outhouse, open door, one window and a million
kids and dogs running around half-naked, the kids that is vision. But they got
to Pottsville okay and Fiona’s cousin and husband (Laura and Stu) turned out to
be good hosts. So good that they made sure that Kenny and Fiona stayed in town
long enough to attend the weekly dance at the old town barn (red of course, run
down and in need of paint to keep red of course) that had seen such dances
going back to the 1920s when the Carter Family had actually come through
Pottsville on their way back to Clinch Mountain.
Kenny buckled at the thought, the mere
thought, of going to some Podunk Saturday night “hoe-down” and tried to
convince Fiona that they should leave before Saturday. Fiona would have none of
it and so Kenny was stuck. Actually the dance started out pretty well, helped
tremendously by some local “white lightning” that Stu provided and which he
failed to mention should be sipped, sipped sparingly. Not only that but the
several fiddles, mandolins, guitars, washboards and whatnot made pretty good music.
Music like Anchored in Love and Come All You Fair And Tender Ladies,
stuff that he had heard in the folk clubs in Harvard Square when he used to
hang out there in the early 1960s. And music that even Kenny, old two
left-feet, one way out of whack, draft-free out of whack, Kenny, could dance to
with Fiona.
So Kenny was sipping, well more than
sipping, and dancing and all until maybe about midnight when this woman, this
local woman came out of nowhere and began to sing, sing like some quick,
rushing wind sound coming down from the hills and hollas (hollows for Yankees,
okay, please). Kenny began to toss and turn a little, not from the liquor but
from some strange feeling, some strange womb-like feeling that this woman’s
voice was a call from up on top of these deep green hills, now mist-filled
awaiting day. And then she started into a long, mournful version of Hills of
Home, and he sensed, sensed strongly if not anything he could articulate
that he was home. Yes, Kenny Jackson, Yankee, city boy, corner boy-bred was
“home,” hillbilly home. So Kenny did really hear Hazel Dickens for first time
in 1970, see.
[As
for Fiona Fay she stayed on the road with Kenny until they headed toward the
Midwest where she veered off home to Valparaiso in Indiana, her hometown as
Kenny headed west to California, to Big Sur and a different mountain ethos.
They were supposed to meet out there a couple of months later after she
finished up some family business. They never did, a not unusual occurrence of
the time when people met and faded along the way, but Kenny thought about her
and that wind-swept mountain dance night for a long time after that.]
Thursday, February 1, 2018
Love Among The Smart Set-William Powell and Myna Loy’s “The Libeled” (1936) –A Film Review
DVD Review
By Writer Greg Green
The Libeled Lady, starring Myra Loy, William Powell, Spencer Tracy, Jean Harlow, 1936
[Those readers who have been following the latest developments about the direction of this American Left History blog site over the past period and have become aware of the conclusions that returning to the old idea of covering all of the American experience and not just hone in on the 1960s experiences of most of the older writers and changing personal know that I have been assigned the job of site administrator which means I will be handing out the assignments and other projects in cooperation with the writers, young and old. I come here from the on-line American Film Gazette where I held basically the same position although there it was called moderator. (Apparently in the “new age” of media, particularly social media, the tradition terms “editor” or “gatekeeper” have fallen out of favor, have fallen in bad odor.)
To get a feel for the job I have taken up this assignment which Sandy Salmon the film critic thought I might be interested in doing to “test the waters” since I have very little experience with the older films that have been the staple of this site. In the future nevertheless the tilt for films will be much more contemporary which everybody, or almost everybody, has agreed is necessary to lure a younger crowd not formed by the rush of the 1960s when black and white films were like catnip to student audiences. P.S. I will weigh in on whether my predecessor Pete Markin, whom I have known for years by reputation and early on from the time he worked at the American Film Gazette when this site needed a cash infusion, was purged or gently put out to pasture some other time. Greg Green]
Sam Lowell who was I have heard the main culprit (not my term but Sandy Salmon’s) during his tenure as film critic before he retired to write on occasion, very occasionally who drove the overwhelming preponderance of old-time black and white films. In those days before Alden Riley and a few stringers came on board with Sandy he did all the reviews himself or were done under his guidance. So he was able to feast on the films that he would watch as a young man in high school (that is where it started) on Saturday afternoons at his local movie theater.
I would assume that the film under review, The Libeled Lady, would be one that he watched on those Saturday afternoons but for the life of me I can’t understand why. Certainly it is not the collective talents of the cast Jean Harlow, Myra Loy, William Powell and Spencer Tracy the last one the only one whose work I am familiar with. So it must be the plot, the story line, the screenplay writers because from what I have read this is supposed to be a screw-ball comedy in an age and time when such fare was grist to the mill. Maybe that bill of fare is what got my grandparents and maybe my parents although they were probably too young to appreciate this through the Great Depression that those same grandparents endlessly carped on whenever anybody complained about anything, about not getting this or that unnecessary to them object like that was a talisman to ward off all discussion.
Let’s see what you think of this, think of a film that was on the short list for the Oscars in 1936. Mayfair swell (not my term of choice but from Sam since I couldn’t think of a better one when we talked about the upper class which dominates this film), Connie played by Ms. Loy (I got used to following New York Times honorifics at American Film Gazette and will continue to do so here for now) sued some low-rent New York City newspaper for libel over a false allegation that she broke up some happy household. She decided to go big or don’t go at all and claimed five million dollars would make her “whole” to use a legal expression. The newspaper in the person of its managing editor, Warren, played by redoubtable Mr. Tracy panicked and tried to lure ladies’ man and ace reporter Bill, played by the inestimable Mr. Powell better known according to Sam as the male duo in the Nick and Nora Charles The Thin Man series with Ms. Loy to run a scam on Connie. The idea, pretty lame its seems even for a low-rent up against it urban newspaper was to get Bill alone with Connie and have his “wife” find them together. To blackmail Connie out of the law suit and out of having to hand over those five very big ones.
I said lame and I meant because there was one little problem with the weasely scheme. Bill was a happily unmarried man with no wife and if anybody was asking, asking at least for public consumption no mistress either. No nonsense the company comes first, freedom of the press even when it lies Warren volunteers his girlfriend something of a goofball flossy if you asked me Gladys, played by the ill-fated Ms. Harlow. Here is where everything gets balled-up not funny. Bill and Gladys marry, a marriage of convenience easily divorced once that onerous court case is over. Problem though those is that while cruising back to America on a luxury liner Bill and Connie fall in love and get married. No problem right since Bill and the hapless Gladys are divorced. Problem Gladys has lost her yen for Warren and wants Bill back. Then through some sleigh-of-hand divorce foul-ups courtesy of the apparently frazzled screenwriters Bill and Gladys are still married. Not to worry though once Bill and Connie put the squeeze play on Gladys runs, no, walks back to her Warren. I hope to high heaven that Sam didn’t spent his hard-earned dollar on this cuckoo of a film. Short-listed for Mr. Oscar or not.
I Accuse-Unmasking The Sherlock Holmes Legend, Part II-Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce’s “The Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes” (1939)-A Film Review
DVD Review
By Danny Moriarty
(Once again as I did in my initial offering on the bogus Sherlock Holmes legend Sherlock Holmes Faces Death, hah!, in the interest of transparency which has become more of an issue these days when every medium is under scrutiny Danny Moriarty is not my real name. As then and will be discussed again below in my research about the “fake news” legend of Mr. Holmes I have run into a notorious cult-like band of desperadoes known as “The Baker Street Irregulars,” why that name I do not know. This clot of criminals, who I am told have very stylized rituals involving illegal drugs and human blood, and are the bane of the London Bobbies, have been connected with the disappearance of many people who questioned the Sherlock myth, and not a few unsolved murders of people who have washed up on the Thames over the years.
This need for an alias, for cover, is no joke since that first review I have been threatened, threatened with I won’t death, death threats, but some nasty actions which necessitate my keeping very close tabs on my security apparatus as I attempt to deflate this miserable excuse for a detective, a parlor detective at that. I will not be stopped by hoodlums and blood-splattered junkies.)
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, starring Basil Rathbone (if that is his real name which is doubtful although unlike myself he has never been transparent enough to say that he is using an alias), Nigel Bruce (a name which has been confirmed as a British National active in the 1930s and 1940s), 1939
We live in an age of debunking. An age perhaps borne aloft by cynicism, hubris, sarcasm and above all “fake news,” not the fake news denying some reality that you hear so much about these days, but by the elaborate strategy of public relations cranks and flacks who will put out any swill as long as they are paid and not a minute longer. That hardly started today but has a long pedigree, a pedigree which has included the target of today’s debunking one James Sherlock Holmes out of London, out of the Baker Street section of that town. From the cutesy “elementary my dear Watson” to that condescending attitude toward everybody he encounters, friend or foe, including the hapless Doctor Watson this guy Holmes is nothing but a pure creation of the public relations industrial complex. As I have noted above I have paid the price for exposing this chameleon, this so-called master detective, this dead end junkie, with a barrage of hate mail and threats from his insidious devotees.
Maybe I better refresh for those who may not have read the first review, may be shocked to find their paragon of a private detective has feet of clay, and an addiction problem no twelve step program could curtail in a million years. Here are some excerpts of what I said in that review which I stand by this day no matter the consequences:
“Today is the day. Today is the day I have been waiting for since I was a kid. Today we tear off the veneer, tear off the mask of the reputation of one Sherlock Holmes as a master detective. Funny how things happen. Greg Green assigned me this film out of the blue, at random he said when I asked him. However this assignment after viewing this film, Sherlock Holmes Faces Death (of course he doesn’t face, hadn’t been anywhere near any danger that would put death in his way but that can wait until I finish out defanging the legend) set off many bells, many memories of my childhood when I first instinctively discovered this guy was a fraud, a con artist.
Back then my grandparents and parents hushed me up about the matter when I told them what I thought of the mighty Sherlock. They went nutty and told me never to speak of it again when I mentioned that a hard-boiled real private detective, a guy who did this kind of work for a living, a guy named Sam Spade who worked out in San Francisco and solved, really solved, the case of the missing black bird which people in the profession still talk about, which is still taught in those correspondence course private detection in ten easy lesson things you used to see advertised on matchbook covers when smoking cigarettes was okay, who could run circles around a parlor so-called detective like Mr. Holmes.
[Even Sam Spade has come in for some debunking of late right here in this space as Phil Larkin and Kenny Jacobs have gone round and round about how little Spade deserved his “rep,” his classic rep for a guy who was picked by some bimbo out of the phone book and who couldn’t even keep his partner alive against that same femme he was skirt-addled over. Kept digging that low-shelf whiskey bottle in the bottom desk drawer out too much when the deal went down. The only guy who is safe is Phillip Marlowe since nobody can call him a “one solved murder wonder” after the string of cold as ice, maybe colder, cases he wrapped up with a bow over the years. They still talk about the Sherwood case out on the Coast even today, talk in hushed tones too. You notice nobody has tried to go after him, not even close. D.M.]
That was then. Now after some serious research as a result of this film’s impact on my memory I have proof to back up my childhood smothered assertions. Sherlock Holmes (if that is his name which is doubtful since I went to the London telephone directories going back the first ones in the late 1800s and found no such name on Baker Street-ever) was nothing but a stone-cold junkie, cocaine, morphine, lanadum and other exotic concoctions which is the reason that he had a doctor at his side at all times in case he needed “scripts” written up. A doctor who a guy like Sam Spade would have sat on his ass a long time before as so dead weight.
That junkie business would not amount to much if it did not mean that high and mighty Sherlock didn’t have to run his own gang of pimps, hookers, con men, fellow junkies, drag queens, rough trade sailors and the flotsam and jetsam of London, high society and low, to keep him in dough for that nasty set of habits that kept him high as a kite. There are sworn statements (suppressed at the time) by the few felons whom the Bobbies were able to pick up that Sherlock was the guy behind half the burglaries, heists and kidnappings in London. And you wonder why the Baker Street Irregulars want to silence me, show me the silence of the grave….
Of course the Bobbies, looking to wrap up a few cold file cases which Sherlock handed them to keep them off the trail, looked the other way and/or took the graft so who really knows how extensive the whole operation was. In a great sleight of hand he gave them Doctor Moriarty who as it turned out dear Sherlock had framed when one wave of police heat was on and who only got out of prison after Holmes died and one of Holmes’ flunkies told the real story about how Holmes needed a “fall guy” and the wily Doctor took the fall.”
This The Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes cover-up is a classic example of police collision to cover their own dirty tracks. Everybody knows that Sherlock made his name after he beat down some poor mistreated dog who should have been reported as abused to whatever they call the humane animal treatment society in merry old England.
You don’t have to be one of those correspondence course private detection in ten easy lessons that you used to see on matchbook covers when cigarette smoking was okay like I said before to know that these high society cases are inside
jobs. Naturally the luckless and clueless Holmes has his fall guy all set up. A guy like I mentioned before named Professor Moriarty (no relative since if you remember this is my alias) who is a salt of the earth type but whom Holmes has a deep hatred for ever since the good doctor stopped feeding him his drugs, told him to go cold turkey. That good advice and good cheer despite the obvious fact that no twelve step program was going to do anything but drive Holmes to who knows what paranoid delusions. All the good professor did was to clue in a guy whose father had been bamboozled by this high society young woman’s father. Had been murdered by the dame’s old man.
The dispute had been over dough money which the guy should have gotten as inheritance but didn’t and wound up on skid road. While this young heiress and her ne’er do well a con artist and card shark from the word around town brother lived high off the hog. The stuff you heard about the good professor trying to take the Crown jewels is nothing but fake news. They were never in danger of being stolen but our man Sherlock raised a big hue and cry after smoking too much hashish and thought he saw them floating over the Thames. Called copper for them to nab favorite fall guy the hapless professor. You never hear about this of course since the coppers kept it hush-hush but that was the night in a drug frenzy Sherlock tried to murder the good professor. Kill him dead. RIP, Professor, RIP. Didn’t happen but the good professor got the slammer anyway and it was only Sherlock’s overdose death that sprung him after “Five Fingers” Benny Boren gave the real story.
Like I said last time, a fake, fake all the way. Unless that Irregular crowd of thugs and blood-stained aficionados get to me this is not the last you will hear about this campaign of mine to dethrone this pompous junked-up imposter. I am just getting into second gear now.
The Hills And Hollas Of Home- In Honor Of The Late Hazel Dickens-The “Queen” Of The Appalachia Hills And Saturday Night Red Barn Dance
By Sam Lowell
This is the fourth and final installment (the first dated January 13, 2018, the second dated January 19, 2018, and the third January 24, 2018) set as an introduction to the history of the American Left History blog. Initially I believed that this would be a several part series and now it looks like with this final section about the massive internal in-fighting and resultant shake-up that brought the original leader of all of these publications down, brought in a new regime with my help and whatever direction the new leadership is heading we are finally done with a task a lot harder than I thought it would be. For a final time as I have been at pains to mention before this task came to me because I am one of the few people, more importantly one of the few writers, who has taken part in almost all of the key junctures in this forty something year history including the latest flare-up which has brought about a new regime, again partially with my help, so I am well-placed to tell the tale.
As part of the “truce” arranged with current site manager Greg Green I will tell the story and will elicit comments from a couple of other Editorial Board members. The first installment dealt with the genesis of this blog with hard copy predecessors going back to the late 1960s when a number of the older writers still standing came on board, many through long friendships with the previous site manager going back to high school days, those including myself. The second dealt with the dog days of the hard copy version of this blog and the greying of its staff. The third dealt with the transfer to the on-line version and some preliminary observations about how the just completed internal struggle came to such a fiery conclusion and explain how I became a member of the opposition. This final section as I said will deal with the food fight of 2017.
All four parts of the now completed project will appear as one unit on February 10th.
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In a sense this last section is a bit anti-climactic since I have laid out the history leading up to the split, my part in it, and the result with the removal of the former site manager Alan Jackson in what I have described truly as a purge. (Some “fragile” types on both sides have backed off from that designation saying it is too rough but Allan knows, just as well as I do both of us veterans of many old-time political struggles in radical circles, that he had been purged.) That elevated Greg Green who had originally come over from the American Film Gazette to run the day to day operations to site manager. As part of the post-Allan regime Greg decided that he would create an Editorial Board to oversee everything and back up his decisions. For transparency reasons I should note that I sit on that board. I should also note that although it has only been in existence the past few months that there has been gripping about it being a rubber-stamp, a group of Greg toadies, and other derogatory remarks from young and older writers alike. Greg has also hired a couple of younger writers, really twenty something out of journalism schools and English majors. Brought on Josh Breslin’s former companion, Leslie Dumont, who many years ago worked here as a stringer but getting nowhere with Alan’s regime left and finally wound up with a big by-line at New York Monthly. Brought on my long-time companion Laura Perkins who also worked as a stringer and got nowhere with Alan and left for an academic and high tech career. Still no soap on getting any black writers, or more generically “writers of color.”
Those are the results thus far not without controversy and some hard feelings especially by the older writers who have been stripped of their titles, younger writers too who had worked for titles. Worse and which almost caused another explosion every writer now can be assigned any topic on any subject to as Greg says “broaden their horizons.” But enough of the current doings and back to the spring of 2017 and the genesis of the in-fighting that has brought these changes.
It almost seems like some twisted kiss of fate that Alex James, Zack’s oldest brother (who by the way is about ten years older than Zack showing a good example of the relative sense of “younger” writers Allan was bringing in. Certainly nobody as young as twenty something Kenny Jacobs), an old friend of ours from the old neighborhood, who went on to become a successful lawyer, went on a business trip to San Francisco last spring (2017). While there out of the blue Alex saw an advertisement on the side of a bus for something called The Summer of Love Experience, 1967 at the de Young Museum in famous Golden Gate Park. Sneaking (according to Alex) out one afternoon he saw the exhibition and was positively floored by the experience. See, he, we, under the “guidance” of the late Peter Paul Markin had been in the thick of the “drugs, sex, and rock and roll” mantra which all of that experience went under. When he got back to Boston Alex called or e-mailed everybody he knew from back in the days who was still standing and who had gone out there to see what was happening, to see as Markin had called it “the world turned upside down.” He gathered a number of us, including Zack who had gone to journalism school and was a veteran of various workshop programs, together in order to propose that in honor of our fallen brother Markin each write our “memoirs” of those times with Zack as editor and publisher. Those who agreed included old friend Allan Jackson who had also gone out there with us. The venture was a great success and various portions were posted last summer on the ALH blog as well as in booklet form.
That seemingly small exercise in 1960s nostalgia apparently snapped something in Allan’s head. I have already mentioned the drift of the blog on the part of the older writers who were allowed by Allan to pick whatever subject they wanted (with the left-overs to the younger writers). Last summer right after the memorial booklet was published and articles posted Allan decided to do a massive blanket coverage of the 50th anniversary of the Summer of Love by assigning a million topics related to that time. If you couldn’t link the Summer of Love, or the 1960s “hippie” experience, into your article he would red-pencil what you had written. (Allan liked to use a red pencil to “edit” something about his radical red youth he said when asked why he didn’t use the usual blue pencil.) This was no joke on Allan’s part. I was doing a little piece on figure skating after reviewing a Sonja Henny 1930s film. Allan asked me why I didn’t bring up the ice skating rink at Fillmore and Pacific where “hippies” would go to skate during 1967 when we were out there. WTF.
All of this came to a head when young Alden Riley, a new hire for the film department to help Sandy Salmon out with the increased load of films that were projected by Greg on the site. He was “assigned” by Allan, over Sandy’s head, to do a review on a bio/pic about Janis Joplin, a key musical figure in the heady days of the Monterey Pops Festival. Reason? After Sandy had done a review of D. A Pennebaker’s documentary about the first Monterey Festival he mentioned Ms. Joplin’s name and Alan said he did not know who she was. Allan heard about that blunder and ordered the assignment as “punishment’ is what he told Si Lannon, another of our old friends. Things only got worse from there as Allan double-downed on the Summer of Love connection for each article.
I am not quite sure who called the first meeting of essentially the whole rank of younger writers (average age somebody figured out about forty-five years old) to see what they would do about Allan’s manic behavior and their dubious assignments which to a man they could give f - -k about to quote Zack. Maybe it was Zack since he Lance Lawrence and Bradley Fox were the three ringleaders of the uprising who in water cooler legend were dubbed the “Young Turks.” They decided to go to Allan and put their cards on the table. He rebuffed them out of hand. That is when I came in, came to one of their meetings being invited by Alden, to see if I could reason with Allan. I proposed to Allan that we get Greg Green from American Film Gazette to come in to do the day to day operations leaving Allan time to write some stuff on his own or think about future assignments. He bought my argument once I explained that we might lose the whole cohort if things didn’t change. They didn’t as Allan pressed Greg to hand out these never-ending freaking 1960s world assignments.
To make a long story short the “Young Turks” (and me) had another meeting, an ultimatum meeting with me as the emissary to Allan again. The proposal of the group was either Allan “retire” or they collectively would quit. The decision to be determined by a majority vote-for or against. For some reason even I don’t understand to this day Allan agreed. You know the rest including my “traitorous” vote with the “Young Turks.” My decisive vote since we won by one vote. What you may not know is that while the split was almost directly along generational lines there were several abstentions among the older writers from the tallies. Any one of them casting a vote for Allan would have shifted the totals the other way and I would have been the one “purged” and working in Kansas someplace. So some of the older guys had also doubts about the wisdom of going back to the past. Now that you have the whole story this episode should be at rest. (With the exception of any articles still in the pipeline before the truce with Greg was negotiated.)
Kenny Jackman heard the late Hazel Dickens (d. 2011) for the very first time on her CD album It’s Hard To Tell The Singer From The Song some years back, maybe 2005, when he was in thrall to mountain music after being hit hard by Reese Witherspoon’s role as June Carter in the film Walk The Line. At that time he got into all things Carter Family unto the nth generation. A friend, a Vermont mountain boy, hipped him to Hazel during his frenzy and he picked up the CD second-hand in Harvard Square. (Really at Sandy’s located between Harvard and Central Squares, a folk institution around town where until recently Sandy had held forth since the early 1960s folk minute when everybody was desperately looking for roots music and that was the place to look first. Hazel’s You’ll Get No More Of Me, A Few Old Memories and the classic Hills of Home knocked him out. The latter, moreover, seemed kind of familiar and later, a couple of months later, he finally figured out why. He had really first heard Hazel back in 1970 when he was down in the those very hills and hollows that are a constant theme in her work, and that of the mountain mist winds music coming down the crevices. What was going on though? Was it 2005 when he first heard Hazel or that 1970 time? Let me go back and tell that 1970 story.
Kenny Jackman like many of his generation of ’68 was feeling foot loose and fancy free, especially after he had been mercifully declared 4-F by his friendly neighbors at the local draft board in old hometown North Adamsville (declared 4-F in those high draft days because he had a seriously abnormal foot problem which precluded walking very far, a skill that the army likes its soldiers to be able to do). So Kenny, every now and again, took to the hitchhike road, not like his mad man friend Peter Paul Markin with some heavy message purpose a la Jack Kerouac and his beat brothers (and a few sisters) but just to see the country while he, and it, were still in one piece no pun intended Kenny told me since the country was in about fifteen pieces then).
On one of these trips he found himself stranded just outside Norfolk, Virginia at a road-side campsite. Feeling kind of hungry one afternoon, and tired, tired unto death of camp-side gruel and stews he stopped at a diner, Billy Bob McGee’s, an old-time truck stop diner a few hundred yards up the road from his camp for some real food, maybe meatloaf or some pot roast like grandma used to make or that was how it was advertised. When he entered the mid-afternoon half-empty diner he sat down at one of the single stool counter seats that always accompany the vinyl-covered side booths in such places. But all of this was so much descriptive noise that could describe a million, maybe more, such eateries. What really caught his attention though was a waitress serving them “off the arm” that he knew immediately he had to “hit” on (although that is not the word used in those days but “hit on” conveys what he was up to in the universal boy meets girl world). As it turned out she, sweetly named Fiona Fay, and, well let’s just call her fetching, Kenny weary-eyed fetching, was young, footloose and fancy free herself and had drawn a bead on him as he entered the place, and, …well this story is about Hazel, so let us just leave it as one thing led to another and let it go at that.
Well, not quite let’s let it go at that because when Kenny left Norfolk a few days later one ex-waitress Fiona Fay was standing by his side on the road south. And the road south was leading nowhere, nowhere at all except to Podunk, really Prestonsburg, Kentucky, and really, really a dink town named Pottsville, just down the road from big town Prestonsburg, down in the hills and hollows of Appalachia, wind-swept green, green, mountain mist, time forgotten . And the reason two footloose and fancy free young people were heading to Podunk is that a close cousin of Fiona’s lived there with her husband and child and wanted Fiona to come visit (visit “for a spell” is how she put it but I will spare the reader the localisms). So they were on that hell-bend road but Kenny, Kenny was dreading this trip and only doing it because, well because Fiona was the kind of young woman, footloose and fancy free or not, that you followed, at least you followed if you were Kenny Jackson and hoped things would work out okay.
What Kenny dreaded that day was that he was afraid to confront his past. And that past just then entailed having to go to his father’s home territory just up the road in Hazard. See Kenny saw himself as strictly a Yankee, a hard “we fought to free the slaves and incidentally save the union” Yankee for one and all to see back in old North Adamsville. And denied, denied to the high heavens, that he had any connection with the south, especially the hillbilly south that everybody was making a fuse about trying to bring into the 20th century around that time. And here he was with a father with Hazard, Kentucky, the poorest of the poor hillbillies, right on his birth certificate although Kenny had never been there before. Yeah, Fiona had better be worth it.
Kenny had to admit, as they picked up one lonely truck driver ride after another (it did not hurt in those days to have a comely lass standing on the road with you in the back road South, or anywhere else, especially if you had longish hair and a wisp of a beard), that the country was beautiful. As they entered coal country though and the shacks got crummier and crummier he got caught up in that 1960s Michael Harrington Other America no running water, outhouse, open door, one window and a million kids and dogs running around half-naked, the kids that is vision. But they got to Pottsville okay and Fiona’s cousin and husband (Laura and Stu) turned out to be good hosts. So good that they made sure that Kenny and Fiona stayed in town long enough to attend the weekly dance at the old town barn (red of course, run down and in need of paint to keep red of course) that had seen such dances going back to the 1920s when the Carter Family had actually come through Pottsville on their way back to Clinch Mountain.
Kenny buckled at the thought, the mere thought, of going to some Podunk Saturday night “hoe-down” and tried to convince Fiona that they should leave before Saturday. Fiona would have none of it and so Kenny was stuck. Actually the dance started out pretty well, helped tremendously by some local “white lightning” that Stu provided and which he failed to mention should be sipped, sipped sparingly. Not only that but the several fiddles, mandolins, guitars, washboards and whatnot made pretty good music. Music like Anchored in Love and Come All You Fair And Tender Ladies, stuff that he had heard in the folk clubs in Harvard Square when he used to hang out there in the early 1960s. And music that even Kenny, old two left-feet, one way out of whack, draft-free out of whack, Kenny, could dance to with Fiona.
So Kenny was sipping, well more than sipping, and dancing and all until maybe about midnight when this woman, this local woman came out of nowhere and began to sing, sing like some quick, rushing wind sound coming down from the hills and hollas (hollows for Yankees, okay, please). Kenny began to toss and turn a little, not from the liquor but from some strange feeling, some strange womb-like feeling that this woman’s voice was a call from up on top of these deep green hills, now mist-filled awaiting day. And then she started into a long, mournful version of Hills of Home, and he sensed, sensed strongly if not anything he could articulate that he was home. Yes, Kenny Jackson, Yankee, city boy, corner boy-bred was “home,” hillbilly home. So Kenny did really hear Hazel Dickens for first time in 1970, see.
[As for Fiona Fay she stayed on the road with Kenny until they headed toward the Midwest where she veered off home to Valparaiso in Indiana, her hometown as Kenny headed west to California, to Big Sur and a different mountain ethos. They were supposed to meet out there a couple of months later after she finished up some family business. They never did, a not unusual occurrence of the time when people met and faded along the way, but Kenny thought about her and that wind-swept mountain dance night for a long time after that.]
